


like a hunter at my back door

by scorpiod



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, references to canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re both hunters; it's in their nature to kill each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a hunter at my back door

**Author's Note:**

> Slight AU in that I'm fudging when Allison goes to France in season two. Spoilers up to the end of season two, but you're safe after that. Title taken from Poe's _Wild_.

He knows who she is the first time he sees her. It’s hard not to—on general principle, Derek likes to be aware of which hunters are in the area but he knows the scent of Argent better than he knows the scent of most things. He can’t forget it—Derek smelled it in the woods the night before, all gun powder and pine right after he found his sister (they followed him; like they were waiting for a homecoming), though the scent is fainter, more faded on Allison.

 _She’s just a girl_ , he reminds himself, but youth doesn’t mean anything; youth can still hide killers, everywhere you look.

But Allison’s face is softer, less jagged than Kate’s face, despite the familiarity—open and _young_ —she doesn’t seem to know anything about what it means to be an Argent yet.

 _Be more alert_ , he tells himself. _Don’t trust her_ , he tells himself, but all he does is take her home.

*

Months, _months_ later—after Kate and Peter and Victoria and Gerard—and Allison Argent is pointing a crossbow at him, her face hard and cold fury behind her warm brown eyes. She’s not teenager anymore, same way he wasn’t a teenager when he Kate burned down his family. Now she’s just steel, cool efficiency and hidden rage; it’s achingly familiar but he doesn’t like to think about it.

It’s not the first time she’s been on his property. He remembers the flurry of panic in his chest at the thought of Argents trespassing again, when he came home one day and smelled Allison and worse yet, _Kate’s_ familiar scent among the burnt ashes of his family home. It didn’t matter that six years had passed since he caught her scent, he won’t forget it.

But it’s not his property anymore, isn’t it? County owns it. And by county, that means Argent now. They took that too.

Derek’s hair stands on end at the sight of her, eyes darting back and forth between her face and her trigger finger, trying to figure out which one will tell him what happens next. He should have smelled her before, but this place smells entirely like Argent now, saturating the burnt wood and lingering scent of his family.

“I thought you were leaving town,” he says, slowly, evenly. More calm than he feels like it.

“I should have killed you,” she spits out. Her voice is soft, but unwavering, her grip strong. She’s unforgiving in her stance and Derek wonders why she doesn’t shoot him right now. “I should have gone after you instead of Boyd and Erica.”

“And Isaac,” he reminds her. “And yeah, you should have,” Derek says, a low warning rumble building in his chest. His face hasn’t changed, eyes still their human color, but his claws are out, paying attention to when she’ll strike—glancing at her trigger finger and seeing when it’ll slip, when he’ll have to catch the arrow. He tries to remember he shouldn’t kill her, that’s she’s important to Scott and he’s not prepared to deal with the fallout of what’ll happen if she dies, but he can’t make any promises if she comes after him; he’s not staring down a teenage girl but a hunter, as dangerous as the rest of them.

“Why did you do it?”

_Because she was trying to kill Scott and Scott’s pack and Derek can’t lose pack again, not again, Derek’s lost too many people for one life._

He told Scott he wouldn’t tell her that either as well.

“You’re a hunter,” Derek says. “You should know. Ask your father.”

Derek takes off before she can say anything more. She doesn’t chase after him.

He doesn’t come back to his home after that.

*

The next time he’s in the woods, she shoots at him.

It’s not a surprise, in retrospect. Derek’s family told him not to trust hunters; Allison must have heard the same (it’s always been like this—a cycle that won’t break, as sure as the sun will rise and set).

Arrows go flying and Derek is fast, faster than her and faster than arrows, but she catches him off guard and he doesn’t know from where she’s shooting. Two arrows land, one leg and one in the shoulder and they _burn_ when it hits him. _Wolfsbane_ , he notices, or at least laced with it. It’s not enough to kill him but only because he’s an alpha. Enough to trip him up and down him, landing against a tree trunk, half sliding down on the grass.

Allison drops from the trees, a little further in front of him.

_Oh. Figures._

“This won’t kill me,” he says, but Allison aims a crossbow at his face.

“That’s alright,” Allison says, “I just wanted to watch you bleed.” She walks towards him, leaves crunching beneath her boots, spine straight and standing tall, until she’s standing over him. With the arrows in his body, he can’t shift so well enough to heal, functionally at her mercy.

“You must have been waiting a long time in those trees,” he says, hating how he gasps out the words, lacking the menace or the threat he wants to carry.

Allison bends down, one hand on a knife that she’s produced from her boot. She moves faster than he thought a human could move, swift and deadly, knife under his throat. _That won’t kill me either_. He can heal from a slit throat. There’s a lot he can heal from—but Allison should know that by now.

“I’m going to pull these out now,” Allison says, gesturing towards the arrow. “You attack me and I’ll make it worse for you.”

She rips the arrows with no grace or warning, just places one hand on his haunch and the other on the shaft and pulls. Derek howls, and then clamps his mouth down, biting on his lip and tongue until there’s blood in his mouth. It _hurts_. There’s no finesse to it. She’s never done this before. He’d be dead if he were human, bleeding out or the wound infected. She does the shoulder next.

Derek’s voice is sore when she’s done, but there’s still a pulsing throbbing pain in his wounds that’s spreading to spread. Allison pulls out something from her pocket—he didn’t even know she had it; a little bottle, that Allison opens up and dips her fingers in, coating them with a white-beige gunk.

“What is that?” He says, but his speech is slurred, slow in his ears.

“It’s a salve,” she says, impassive. “So my arrows don’t kill you.” She spreads it over the wound on, and Derek thrashes against her, but that just hurts more, making Allison’s fingers slip and poking the wound instead. But it’s over when she finishes with the wound on his shoulder, her fingers coming back stained with his blood. He can already feel his body knitting itself back together.

“It was cruel of you,” she says after, sticking the arrows back into her quiver. She stands up but doesn’t turn around, choosing to step back away from him instead. “What you did? Making my mom kill herself.”

“If you’re waiting for an apology,” Derek says, “you’re not gonna get one.” He won’t say _your mom brought it on herself_. He doesn’t tell her, _if your mom didn’t hate my kind so much, she’d still be here._

He doesn’t say it, because you can’t ask a hunter to not hunt. You can’t ask him not to respond in kind.

Allison glares at him, eyes narrowed. Derek smiles, humorless and bloody-mouthed. It’s less of a smile, really. Just teeth.

“This doesn’t make us even,” Allison says. Her heart is pounding, Derek can hear it, but her voice is calmer than she feels, than he feels even. “I don’t forgive you. But I’m going to stop. I’m not going to come after you.”

“How generous of you,” Derek says.

“I don’t care what you do,” Allison says, raising her voice. “I don’t care about your apologies. Just don’t step out of line, or I’ll put you down.”

Familiar words—he’s heard this before, almost everywhere he goes.

“You can expect the same from me,” Derek says. He doesn’t feel like making threats, not when he’s bloodied and recovering on the ground, his voice all but gravel, but he can’t afford not to make a threat. “Come after mine and I’ll do the same to you.”

“I’m not going to be like that. I’m not going to be like them.”

Derek glances at her hands—stained with his blood when she pulled the arrow out—and her face, unnervingly familiar. “You already are,” he says.

Allison gives him one last uneasy look, like she wants to stab him again with her arrows for good measure, but her jaw tightens instead, and says nothing more. She turns on her heel, deliberately giving him her back, and walks away.


End file.
